A banner above the doors of the newly opened Maple Hall reads, “Enthusiasm makes an ordinary day extraordinary,” and based on early reactions to the renovated residence hall, enthusiasm is high.

“What we’ve learned from this project is that it’s a success,” said Randy Alexander, director of the Department of Residence, during a guided media tour held Thursday. “The response so far has been tremendous.”

Alexander said the department received 1,200 requests for the 488 spaces available in the building, which reopened last week after 14 months of renovation.

“What we’re putting out there on the market is a very popular item,” he said.

Roommates Eric Fatka and Ed Tubbs said they thought Maple was an improvement over other campus living options.

“This is so much nicer than any other room I’ve been in,” said Fatka, junior in animal science.

“It’s awesome. It’s like a hotel room,” said Tubbs, junior in computer engineering.

The reason for the excitement seems to stem from the facilities that the new Maple Hall boasts.

The building will be locked 24 hours a day, only accessible by proximity scanner cards issued to Maple residents. These same cards also will regulate entrance to the building’s elevators, stairways and meeting rooms. Maple is the first campus building at Iowa State to rely exclusively on electronic security.

On each of Maple’s eight floors, students will have access to a full service range and oven, a den, a meeting room and a trash chute. Four of the floors also will feature small computer labs.

Instead of residents sharing only two bathroom facilities on each floor as in previous years, single occupancy showers and toilets, intended to give students more privacy, line the halls.

Each student room is outfitted with carpeted floors, individual room climate controls, standard Ethernet hookups, increased lighting, sink fixtures and flexible bunks, dressers and wardrobes built by Iowa Prison Industries.

Each floor also will have two handicap-accessible rooms, and 10 percent of the rooms are suites designed for upperclassmen.

Many of these changes were an attempt to make Maple more desirable to students.

“A lot of the amenities are things that came directly from the student surveys,” Alexander said.

Beyond the improvements in function, Maple Hall also received an artistic facelift. Because of regulations requiring all publicly funded building projects to spend at least one-half of 1 percent of their funds on art, the floors and walls of the main level of the building are decorated with various images of Iowa-inspired art such as roosters, books and small cats.

But the changes in Maple are not all palpably apparent. The renovated residence hall is also subject to renovated policies.

Of the nearly 500 residents in Maple Hall, 23 percent are upperclassmen who applied to live in the hall last spring. Applicants were required to carry a grade point average of at least 2.5, to have no serious discipline record and to have been involved in extra-curricular activities.

The hope is that these residents would positively influence the freshman majority in Maple, Alexander said.

“We were looking for people already involved in the community around them,” he said. “We just wanted to stack the deck a little and give the freshman someone to look up to.”

Maple also will be the first residence hall at ISU to have a zero tolerance policy toward alcohol. The building is completely substance free, including cigarettes and alcohol, even for residents who are of legal age.

If a resident receives even one incident report because of an alcohol violation, he or she will be required to move to a different residence hall or move off campus.

“The zero tolerance policy just seemed to make sense since most of our residents can’t legally drink anyway,” Alexander said. “If we say up front there’s to be no alcohol, it obviously wasn’t just a mistake if they get caught with it.”

Alexander said he was not worried about the strict alcohol policy driving away prospective residents.

“The people that moved in here wanted it that way,” he said. “Many said that was one of the top reasons they chose Maple. Remember, no student is required to live in a residence hall.”

Alexander said these changes in policy were enacted after studying what new college students need in the residence halls to thrive.

“Some of the policy changes are things that national testing has proven younger students need,” he said. “We’re trying to move away from the one-size-fits-all concept.”

Alexander said the Department of Residence is expecting freshmen in Maple to achieve higher GPAs and be overall more successful their first year because of the pre-selected upperclassmen population and other policy changes.

“We’ll take a look at this thing after a year or so,” he said, “but we really expect it to be pretty successful.”